That's a signal to drive carefully, Dickson said, lest you squish the salamander on its way to mate.

This year, maybe, you should take extra note of these always silent, always generally largely invisible, amphibians. The DEEP, along with Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation, has named 2014 the year of the salamander.

"That's wonderful," Michael said, glad that these creatures he's tracked around swamps and pools are getting some attention.

There are 12 salamander species in the state. One, the blue-spotted salamander, found only in selected spots in eastern Connecticut, is endangered. Two -- the northern slimy salamander, which shows up in Bethel and Brookfield, and the northern spring salamander -- are threatened; a fourth, the Jefferson salamander, is listed as a species of special concern.

The reason is that salamanders lead complicated lives.

Most of the year, they live hidden away under leaf mulch or rotting logs. They need to keep their skins moist, Dickson said, and so like damp places.

But in the spring, they head to vernal pools to mate. After they do so, the females lay eggs, then everyone turns around and heads back to the woods. After the eggs hatch, it takes about 60 days for a salamander larva to grow legs. Then it too heads into the woods.

In general, Dickson said, salamanders return to the same pools.

"It's a multi-generational thing," she said.

These pools -- depressions in the floor of the forests that fill with rain, melted snow and amphibian life in the spring -- are crucial elements of the state's environment.

But they can be destroyed by development sprawling into the woods. And narrow buffer rings of undeveloped land around them don't offer salamanders any protection for the rest of the season, when they're living away from their mating grounds.

"It's a group that's very threatened by habitat destruction," Dickson said.

These four-legged carnivores are useful to us. They eat insects, worms and other invertebrates.

But generally, there's only one species people see. That's the red eft, the brightly colored juvenile version of the red-spotted newt, which people see scurrying across forest floors in the spring and summer.

Dickson said when you find a spotted salamander on the road on a wet spring night, you know you've found something special. They're big -- as long as nine inches from nose to tip of tail -- with black skin and bright yellow spots.

"People see them and say `Wow, what is that?' " she said of creatures that look like they strayed into New England from the Amazon basin.